Biotech entrepreneur and former 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy just beat the pants off of political newcomer Casey Putsch (R) by a margin of 82% – 18% (approximately 530,000 votes to 116,000) in the Ohio gubernatorial primary. 

The win positions Ramaswamy to face Democrat Amy Acton, the former Ohio health director who led the state’s COVID-19 response and won her party’s nomination unopposed, in the November general election. Acton’s running mate is former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper.

The Republican primary lacked suspense after Ramaswamy, 40, secured early endorsements from President Trump and the state party. Still, the scale of his victory surprised some observers given his relatively recent entry into Ohio politics.

Ramaswamy announced his candidacy in February 2025 after stepping down from his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration initiative he co-led with Elon Musk. He has framed his gubernatorial bid as a natural extension of that work – bringing a “startup mindset” to Columbus to make Ohio a national leader in innovation, economic growth, and government efficiency.

His campaign was exceptionally well-funded. Ramaswamy raised more than $25 million from donors and contributed another $25 million of his own money, ending the primary with over $30 million in cash on hand — resources he used for a $10 million television ad blitz in the final weeks. The spending underscored his determination to lock down the nomination early and build momentum for the fall.

Still, the scale of his victory was notable given lingering divisions within the GOP base over one of his signature policy positions: H-1B visas.

Calling the system ‘badly broken,’ Ramaswamy has called for replacing it with a pure merit-based system designed to attract the world’s top STEM and technical talent, insisting this is essential for U.S. competitiveness against China – except he shat on Americans in saying so. In a widely discussed December 2024 post, he attributed American companies’ preference for foreign-born engineers partly to cultural factors, writing that the U.S. has “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long” and that immigrant families often prioritize achievement more rigorously than “normal” American households.

Critics, including some Trump supporters and anti-H-1B voices, accused him of wanting to displace American workers and favoring foreign (particularly Indian) talent. His primary opponent Casey Putsch and online influencers amplified claims that Ramaswamy’s companies had previously used the program (filing for 29 H-1B visas historically) while publicly criticizing it. The backlash intensified after Trump’s endorsement, with some MAGA accounts posting comments like “Better work on your H-1B visa.”

His brief tenure at DOGE ended when he resigned to pursue the Ohio governorship, a move some critics viewed as opportunistic but which supporters praised as prioritizing state-level impact. Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement on the night Ramaswamy launched his campaign gave him instant credibility with the GOP base.

Democratic Side and General Election Outlook

Amy Acton, 60, has positioned her campaign around affordability – targeting inflation, gas prices, and housing costs. The fact that she was a lockdown nazi during COVID, however, remains a potential vulnerability in a state that has trended strongly Republican in recent cycles.

Ohio has not elected a Democratic governor in nearly two decades. Yet early polling has suggested the general election could be closer than the state’s partisan lean might indicate, particularly if national headwinds affect Trump-aligned candidates or if Acton successfully mobilizes suburban and independent voters.

The race is already shaping up to be one of the most expensive gubernatorial contests in Ohio history.

Authored ‘No1’ via Gold and Geopolitics substack,

Three people sent me Richard Medhurst’s petrogas-dollar piece this week. I read it. Twice even.

There’s a lot in there that I feel is correct.

The chronology of the Levantine Basin deals.

Cheney’s 2001 National Energy Policy.

The roughly $35 billion of Chevron contracts signed across Israel, Syria, Greece, and Cyprus in the past six months.

None of that is in dispute.

The piece is, on the facts, broadly accurate.

What I think though is that the reading of those facts is faulty.

Some history. 

In 1944 Bretton Woods pegged the dollar to gold and made it the world’s reserve currency. In 1971 Nixon unpegged it. Three years later, Kissinger negotiated the Saudi arrangement that pegged it to something else – oil. The petrodollar was born. Everyone needed oil, oil was priced in dollars, thus everyone needed dollars.

Medhurst’s thesis is that the same trick is being repeated, with gas as the new anchor.

The Petrogas-Dollar. Same architecture, new commodity.

But gas isn’t oil.

Oil is fungible at planetary scale. One global market, one rough price band with quality differentials. Tankers go anywhere where there’s a port and a refinery. Every country needs it. Every industry uses it. Almost every modality of transport runs on it.

But gas is regional. LNG requires specialised liquefaction terminals on the export side, cryogenic tankers in transit, and regasification infrastructure on the import side. Each piece takes years and billions to build. Pipeline gas is captive to the geography of the pipe. Henry Hub, TTF, and JKM regularly trade at multiples of each other for what is nominally the same molecule. In 2022, European gas hit roughly 25x the US price – that’s the market telling you that there is no single global gas market, just regional ones tethered by expensive bottlenecks.

Anchoring a settlement currency to gas isn’t a step up from oil in my opinion.

It’s a step down.

Less universal demand, less liquid market, more infrastructure dependency, narrower counterparty base. If oil was the commodity that justified the petrodollar’s reach, gas cannot replace it without shrinking the regime it’s supposed to anchor.

Then there’s what’s been happening to the dollar itself. The moment Western powers froze $300 billion of Russian central bank reserves in 2022, every neutral reserve manager on earth received an unscheduled lesson in what “safe” actually meant in practice.

That lesson is still being absorbed, and the absorption is showing up in central bank gold buying at multi-decade highs, parallel payment rails being onboarded, sovereign Treasury holdings declining year over year.

None of it is dramatic. But all of it is compounding.

So the actual picture Medhurst is painting: a fading anchor (oil-and-dollar) being half-replaced by a structurally narrower one (gas-and-dollar), sitting on top of a settlement currency that’s slowly losing the trust required to function as one in the first place.

That’s a regression on two axes at the same time. Not a strategic plan.

The successor isn’t oil-and-dollar. It sure as ain’t a gas-and-dollar. By elimination of every other alternative, it will come back to gold.

Let’s start with Russia.

That’s where his documentary opens.

“The most severe logistical disruption in modern Russian history”. 40% of seaborne export capacity disabled. Production cuts of 300,000 to 400,000 barrels per day in April. (Not an interpretation, those numbers come from OPEC’s monthly report).

The Sirius Report, which tracks vessel movements rather than quotas, has Russian seaborne crude exports flat at 3.5 million barrels per day in April. The Pacific terminals that got hit in the spring strikes are fully recovered by now. The Baltic ports? Kept on loading. Whatever the bombing campaign was supposed to accomplish, it has accidentally functioned as a renovation programme.

The 300-400k figure measures voluntary discipline within the OPEC+ quota framework. It is not a damage assessment. Russia produced slightly less in April because the cartel asked them to, not because there’s a NATO destroyer parked outside Murmansk.

What did happen is that Europe outsourced the demand. They sanctioned Russia. For the 20th time now I guess, because the previous 19 were so successful.

But because even Europe still needs oil, they then turned around and bought the exact same molecules via Indian and Chinese refineries. Who bought it from Russia. At a discount. And mostly in local currencies.

Plus, they sold it at a premium. To Europe. That sanctioned that exact same oil. Great job virtue signaling.

Iran tells a similar story. The piece argues the blockade is starving China of its third-largest oil supplier. TankerTrackers reported on April 24 that Iran exported more oil in the first three weeks of April than in the entire month of March. The blockade has tightened since. WSJ documented loadings dropping in the second half of April, and Project Freedom only formally launched at CENTCOM this morning with 15,000 personnel and over 100 aircraft. The screws are turning, real consequences are landing. (🦗 sidenote: I only hear crickets… 🦗 Still waiting for what news will turn up… 🦗)

But Iran went into this war producing 1.1 million barrels per day at $47 a barrel. Through most of it, production has run around 1.5 million at $110.

I think Trump is pissed right now that he did not receive a “thank you” card yet…

Another argument landed on Saturday – which is after Medhurst’s piece landed. But it doesn’t fit the frame of the article, so I doubt it’ll be added.

US Treasury sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical and four Chinese teapot refineries on Friday over Iranian crude purchases.

Hengli isn’t just a teapot. It’s strategic national infrastructure. 280 billion RMB was invested with a 20 million tons annual refining capacity. It’s one of China’s seven major petrochemical bases. Plus the non-sanctioned parent group is the world’s largest shipbuilder.

Now on Saturday, China’s Ministry of Commerce activated the 2021 Blocking Statute. For the first time ever. Chinese firms and individuals are now legally prohibited from recognizing, implementing, or complying with the US sanctions.

Compliance has been removed as a choice.

“Rock, meet hard place” or something like that?

I doubt this will feature in Medhurst’s 25-year plan any time soon.

To me this looks like a reactive escalation against the Treasury announcement.

And THAT is the recurring shape of this whole thing. Every sanction tightens the parallel system. Every escalation removes another counterparty from the dollar rails. This theory isn’t some 5D strategic genius.

It’s an adaptation. Metabolic. Washington swings at whatever part it wants today… And that system adapts.

Bank of Kunlun was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2012 for its Iran-related dealings, in what must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The sanctioning was the strategic move. The consequence – as it so often is – was unintended. By cutting Kunlun out of the dollar system, Treasury also cut its remaining dollar exposure to zero, making it the perfect institutional vehicle for yuan-denominated Iran trade.

For thirteen years now, Iranian oil has flowed to Chinese teapot refineries through Kunlun, settled in RMB, entirely outside SWIFT. Iran can’t easily spend the accumulated yuan in dollars, so it likely converts the surplus to physical gold via the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

Iranian oil → yuan → gold. The loop has been running since the year Obama was re-elected. It is now formally protected, on the Chinese side, by a Blocking Statute.

The PBOC has bought gold for seventeen consecutive months. Official reserves are over 74 million troy ounces. The unofficial figure is widely assumed to be substantially higher, given that Chinese domestic mine production since 2000 alone (around 8,150 tonnes) exceeds the entire stated US Treasury holding. China’s US Treasury exposure has fallen from a 2013 peak of $1.32 trillion to $693 billion in February 2026.

Spot is around $4,800 an ounce. Shanghai still trades at consistent premiums to London and COMEX. Chinese banks are rationing 600 kilograms of bullion per bank per day, and every allocation evaporates in under a minute.

While we’re on the subject. The US Treasury carries its own gold holdings on the books at $42.2222 per troy ounce, a statutory price last revised in 1973. Spot is $4,800. The mark-to-market gap is roughly $1.25 trillion. Or said differently: about 3% of its national debt. Or even more differently: if they sell everything, they can run the US government for about a week and a half.

Every $100 that gold rises does add ~$25 billion. I have no idea whether anyone in Treasury has noticed, but I’ve heard a lot of chatter over the years about re-valuating this gold hoard.

The mechanism that I envision instead of a “gas-4-a-dolla’” (not an official US Treasury term… yet) is as I said many times (mainly in comments): internally in a country, the currencies stay fiat. We – the plebs – don’t get to transact in gold and spend 0.03 gram of gold on a gallon of petrol or so. Would be nice, but that’s a pipe-dream in my opinion.

Whatever your local denomination is, be it euro, lira, franc, pound, … Whatever local political pressure or tax laws or domestic monetary systems you have. They’re all localised.

However, cross-border settlement will likely migrate to gold. Not by design. By necessity. By elimination of all worse alternatives.

Every other settlement layer has been politically weaponized over the past six years. The dollar. The euro. SWIFT. CHIPS. Sovereign Treasury holdings. Real estate held in foreign jurisdictions. Central bank reserves. Venezuelan gold seized at the Bank of England in 2019. Russian reserves frozen in 2022. Afghan central bank assets held by the New York Fed since 2021. And Saturday extended the template from sovereign assets to private industrial enterprises.

Gold is the only major asset whose ownership cannot be cancelled by a remote click. It clears bilaterally. It doesn’t care whose face is on the coin. It survives the political weaponisation of every other settlement layer because the weaponisation is the entire reason central banks moved away from it in the first place.

No1 is publishing a roadmap.

There’s no public announcement.

It’s a destination by exclusion – the asset everyone ends up at after the others have been removed.

The petrogas-dollar framing fails on its own terms.

A new monetary regime needs a stable, durable, broadly-accepted anchor. The thesis says the anchor is American gas plus Western Hemisphere oil. The largest LNG producer on earth is already at full export capacity. Henry Hub is at multi-year highs because domestic supply can’t keep up with what’s already been promised. The captured Western Hemisphere reserves require Chevron to actually extract them rather than sign contracts for them. The Levantine Basin gas fields are still in the ground, five months after the deals were inked.

A monetary regime also needs counterparties willing to use it. The petrogas-dollar thesis describes a world where Europe and Asia have no choice but to buy American. In the actual world, the UAE quit OPEC effective May 1 after threatening yuan-denominated oil sales. Saudi Arabia gave 12 million of its citizens access to China’s CIPS payment network the day after that. Iran’s parliament codified yuan and Tether settlement at Hormuz – they’re still deciding on Tether after it got frozen (link). China activated the Blocking Statute on Saturday.

The monetary system is moving.

But it’s not moving to Washington.

The third variable is Trump. The thesis requires you to believe that the same administration that fired its own Navy Secretary three weeks ago for not building ships fast enough is, simultaneously, executing a coherent 25-year plan to reorganize global energy markets and replace fifty years of monetary architecture. Trump and 25-year strategic patience are two phrases that have, to my knowledge, never previously occupied the same sentence before.

Don’t get me wrong. The petrodollar won’t be dying tomorrow.

The US still has the world’s deepest capital markets, the most-traded currency, and the only Treasury market with anywhere near the absorption capacity to hold global savings. Reserve currency status takes decades to erode. The Bank of England held that status for over a century before the dollar took it, and at no point during the slide did anyone in London publish a piece announcing the handover.

Medhurst is right that there’s a transformation under way.

But I strongly believe that he has the direction wrong.

All this chaos ain’t producing a stronger empire.

It’s producing a more fragmented monetary architecture, and gold is starting to fill the gaps the dollar used to fill.

Meteorologists on X are once again warning about a powerful El Niño, pointing to a new plume of warm subsurface water moving across the Pacific “like a freight train.” The latest water temperature data suggest that El Niño later this year could rank among the strongest on record, with potentially significant implications for the Lower 48.

“Updated El Niño forecast for this summer/autumn is ‘off the charts’ EXTREME with ‘boiling red’ map colors along Equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean,” meteorologist Ryan Maue wrote on X. He said this is “code red the Earth’s climate system going into Summer 2026,” which only means “suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity.” 

Updated El Niño forecast for this summer/autumn is “off the charts” EXTREME with “boiling red 🔴” map colors along Equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

This is “Code Red” for the Earth’s climate system going into Summer 2026 –> suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity. pic.twitter.com/NSCJPak6Xt

— Ryan Maue (@RyanWeather) May 5, 2026

Meteorologist Ben Noll said, “A brand new El Niño plume from ECMWF reaches +3˚C in most scenarios by November, which would put this event among the strongest on record.”

Breaking: Brand new El Niño plume from ECMWF reaches +3˚C in most scenarios by November, which would put this event near the strongest on record. pic.twitter.com/m2OOTeXcx8

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) May 5, 2026

Noll continued, “A freight train of warm water continues to chug across the subsurface Pacific Ocean.”

Super El Niño: A freight train of warm water continues to chug across the subsurface Pacific Ocean.

The level of warmth is record-breaking in some areas, peaking around 7˚C (13˚F) above average.

This heat should lead to more intense El Niño projections in May model updates. pic.twitter.com/Y3YKFbgMA7

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) May 4, 2026

If a super El Niño materializes, it could shift weather patterns worldwide, increasing the risk of flooding in some regions, drought and wildfires in others, and further raising global temperatures. An El Niño event typically strengthens the Pacific jet stream and redistributes heat and moisture globally.

Across the U.S., an El Niño influences seasonal rainfall, especially during winter. The stronger, more active jet stream typically shifts southward, bringing wetter-than-average conditions to the southern U.S., including California, the Gulf Coast, and the Mid-South.

The good news is that El Niño reduces Atlantic hurricane activity.

Authored by Paul Rowan Brian via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A number of industry leaders and policy experts are warning that the government’s permission of importing Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) into Canada at low tariff rates will undermine Canada’s auto sector and cause a number of substantial national security risks.

The warnings came in testimony before the House Committee on Industry and Technology, where the speakers said that Ottawa’s quota-based access to Chinese EV makers will make Canada vulnerable to unfair trade practices from Beijing, hollow out the country’s already-struggling auto industry, and bring along a host of security risks associated with data collection and surveillance.

“Let’s be clear, this is not the approach Canada wanted,” Michael Kovrig, head of the Global Network for Strategic Effects, said while testifying May 4 before the committee.

EV Deal

The import of Chinese-made EVs comes under the terms of an agreement between Ottawa and Beijing signed in January of this year that allows the import of up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs in the first year at a tariff rate of 6.1 percent, down from 100 percent.

Ottawa has indicated the quota could rise to approximately 70,000 vehicles per year over the next five years.

As part of the agreement, Beijing moved to cut tariffs on Canadian agricultural exports, slashing tariffs from 84–100 percent on Canadian canola products to 15 percent and relaxing restrictions on other products including seafood and peas.

Ottawa also said it expects China will invest in the Canadian auto sector and possibly set up auto manufacturing inside Canada as part of the wider agreement.

Canada opened permits for Chinese-made EVs on March 1, under which 24,500 will be allowed until August under the 6.1 percent tariff rate. Permits are issued by Global Affairs Canada and last 60 days before expiry. Importers are required to be Canada-based automakers or agents of them, and vehicles must comply with Canadian safety standards.

Ottawa said it plans to review and potentially change how the import system works after the first six months.

‘Trifecta of Risks’

Kovrig said that allowing Chinese-made EVs into Canada causes a “trifecta of risks,” which he described as creating “structural dependence” on China, along with “unfair competition [that] erodes industrial capacity” and imposing a “systemic pressure” on government policy going forward.

“The real question is not, ‘don’t we want cheaper EVs?’” Kovrig said. “It’s whether Canada wants to be a producer in the future auto economy, or merely a consumer market for vehicles produced by China’s industrial system.”

Kovrig’s concerns were echoed by Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association.

“There are no guardrails in this agreement to ensure a level-playing field for manufacturers that have invested in Canada, or to protect Canadians from cybersecurity risks,” Kingston told MPs.

Kingston added that demand for EVs is closely tied to government incentives rather than free-market forces, and that serious harm could be done to the North American auto supply chain.

“Demand for EVs is directly related to rebates, and we saw it when the previous federal government rebate went away, we saw demand for EVs decline quite significantly,” he said, adding that import of Chinese-made EVs “will undermine the auto sector and presents risks to the North American auto supply chain.”

Canada’s auto sector remains a major part of the economy and directly employs roughly 125,000 workers, the majority of whom are employed in Ontario. More than 90 percent of Canadian-made vehicles are exported to the United States.

Kingston also said that keeping access to the U.S. market is crucial for Canada and “there is no industry without U.S. access,” saying that opening up to Chinese imports could undermine North American integration.

In mid-January, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada’s deal with China was “problematic.” This was followed on Jan. 24 by U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to put 100 percent tariffs on Canadian goods in response to the deal.

Controls

Several Liberal MPs on the committee asked questions about the economic and security issues related to importing Chinese-made EVs, stating that it could help Canadian consumers access more affordable vehicles and move Canada closer to climate goals.

For her part, Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner asked whether Canada could put conditions on Chinese firms, such as on domestic labour, security, and standards, in order for them to be allowed to import the vehicles.

Kingston said such an approach won’t work.

“If you say that you have to have a local supply chain and use local unionized labour, the response from a Chinese OEM [Original Equipment Manufacturer] is, ’thanks, but no thanks,’” he said.

“The moment they want more access, they will restrict our exports of canola. They’ll come up with other reasons to leverage more access into the market. This is the Chinese trade playbook. You can see it in sector after sector in different countries,” he added.

Kovrig shared this view, saying that Beijing tends to use a quota as a “ratchet” to force more market access.

“What begins as a capped quota becomes a ratchet that only expands. Concentrated sectoral economic dependence also constricts federal policy-making autonomy,” he said.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] weaponizes technology, supply chains, and market access to coerce independence to its geopolitical agenda.”

He added that “forced labour” is also part of the Chinese EV supply chain and cited evidence from Sheffield Hallam University linking forced labour of China’s ethnic Uyghur population to key battery and EV production stages.

Kingston added that even if China were to build a factory in Canada, it would likely be a human rights and economic disaster.

“If they build a plant, they bring in labour from China. And as we’ve seen in Hungary, the conditions have been characterized as slave-like conditions,” he said, referring to a Chinese-operated factory in Hungary.

Benefits of EVs

Several industry leaders who testified before the committee said EVs would be a net positive for Canada.

Jeff Turner, director of Mobility at Dunsky Energy and Climate Advisors, said EVs would help Canadians in various ways, including by bringing “almost $2,000 per year in fuel savings per household and reductions of GHG emissions and other emissions that have significant health impacts for Canadians.”

Cherith Sinasac of the Electro-Canada Foundation also emphasized her view of the positive role that EVs could have and said their origin is much less important than infrastructure readiness.

“Canada needs a strong long-term EV charging infrastructure strategy,” she said, adding that there must be a coordinated investment strategy by provinces and economic sectors.

“EVs and their battery storage have the potential to be a national energy asset for our grid,” Sinasac said.

Security Risks

Kingston and Kovrig both said that in addition to economic damage, bringing in Chinese-made EVs could pose security risks, including potential data access concerns and dangers to national security.

“China’s 2017 National Intelligence law compels any Chinese firm, including from overseas operations, to share data with Beijing on demand,” Kovrig said. “There’s no judicial review and no challenge mechanism.”

Kovrig described Chinese-made EVs as “a rolling computer with cameras” that are “state-linked data platforms.”

This echoed similar concerns from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who stated his opposition to allowing Chinese-made EVs into Canada this past January, writing on X that such vehicles “function like roving surveillance systems on our streets [and] should not be allowed in Canada – collecting data, tracking Canadians and exposing us to a foreign regime.”

Figure’s CEO told Sourcery’s Molly O’Shea that the humanoid robotics company is preparing for a “near-term” push to bring humanoid robots into homes, where they would perform basic household tasks under a consumer subscription model that could cost “hundreds per month,” similar to a car lease.

Molly O’Shea asked Figure CEO Brett Adcock:

“In the near term, what do you see as the first commercial application for these robots? Like, is it gonna be in the home? Is it gonna be in the factory?”

Adcock responded:

“In the near term, we’re gonna be selling these into the home. So you can lease a Figure 03 for something like $600 a month.”

He continued:

“Yeah. You can plug it into a wall outlet, and it’ll go to its dock and charge. I want it to do the laundry every day, dishes every day, and tidy the house multiple times a day. That’s what I want.”

.@adcock_brett says in the “near term” @Figure_robot will sell humanoid robots for the home for ~$600/month:

“You can plug it in a wall outlet, it’ll go to its dock and charge.”

“I want it to do the laundry every day, dishes every day, and tidy the house multiple times a day.” https://t.co/z1GlCILVW9 pic.twitter.com/n8lFocjUy1

— sourcery (@sourceryy) May 5, 2026

Adcock posted a chart on Threads showing, he said, “Humanoid robots manufactured at Figure by month,” revealing a clear production ramp.

However, the chart lacked a Y-axis, leaving the actual shipment numbers unclear.

Forbes pointed out that shipments may have climbed from roughly 60 units in February to 120 in March and 240 in April. However, those shipment numbers remain far below China’s Agibot, which reportedly shipped 5,000 humanoids over three months.

Our latest note on the humanoid robot space, including UBS’s delivery estimates, is available here.  

Authored by Rabbi Michael Barclay via American Greatness,

On April 8, the California Assembly Committee on Public Employment and Retirement voted 19–0 to adopt AB2017, followed on April 22 by the California Assembly Committee on Appropriations, which voted 7–0 to adopt the bill. And with those votes, all that is left for this to become California law is the passing of it by the State Assembly and Senate and approval by the governor.

And with it, the state of California will no longer exist as we know it, but will become the Islamic Republic of California.

Introduced by California Assemblyman Matt Haney (D-San Francisco 17th District) at the behest of CAIR, the bill seeks to officially recognize the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as California state holidays.

There are no holidays from other religions that are recognized as state holidays in California.

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Epiphany are all extremely important holidays in Judaism and Christianity.

But none of them are recognized as California state holidays.

But according to Haney and the California legislature, apparently, Islamic holidays are much more important to the state than either Judaism or Christianity.

This bill is clearly unconstitutional, as it is in direct contradiction to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .”

By placing two Islamic holidays as official state holidays, they are respecting the establishment of a specific religion. But the problem is greater than just their violation of the Constitution in attempting to pass this bill.

The holidays themselves, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, are expressions and manifestations of the very worst aspects of Islam.

Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the Islamic month of Ramadan and is the penultimate celebration of the month and its meanings. Ramadan is the month-long holiday commemorating Mohammed’s first vision in 610 CE, in which he supposedly was visited by the angel Gabriel (named Jibril in Arabic) in a cave near Mecca and given a revelation that ultimately became the Quran. It is a month of fasting and a national holiday in countries such as Iran, Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim theocracies.

It is also traditionally the month of war in Islam. Although war is forbidden in the Quran during four other months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th), it is not only allowed during Ramadan; it has historically been encouraged to be a month of initiating war against “infidels.” The Yom Kippur War against Israel in 1973 was started by the Arabs during Ramadan. Three years ago, Ismail Haniyeh, who was considered the political leader of Hamas (and who lived in Qatar until killed in July of 2024 and had a net worth of over two billion dollars), called for all Arabs to attack Israel during Ramadan and to siege and blockade the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and have continual mass riots there. Ramadan, going back to Mohammed himself, is the time to start wars on non-Muslims and is a source of Islamic pride as the time to forcefully convert the world to Islam. The Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s official arm in Syria, has even described Ramadan as “a month of conquests.”

Some historical examples of the Islamic intention during Ramadan include the Battle of Badr, a victory led by Mohammed himself in the second Ramadan; the conquest of Mecca, 6 years after Badr; the war for Andalusia in 711 CE; the Battle of Ain Jalut against the Mongols; and the Battle of Hattin during the Crusades.

And that’s just in the first 200 years of Islamic history.

But Matt Haney and the California Legislature want to make this holiday, which is about military victory over non-Muslims, into an official state holiday!

And then there is the second Islamic holiday that they want to make an official state holiday: Eid al-Adha, the “Feast of the Sacrifice.” This is a holiday about being willing to violently sacrifice and kill if it is commanded by Allah. It includes throwing stones at a wall to symbolize the willingness to fight for the “will of God” by stoning Satan and exemplifies the observant Islamic belief in stoning when “required.” Animals are also sacrificed as part of this holiday’s celebration. And this is not a small sacrifice of one chicken for an entire community, but rather, the expectation is that each Muslim will perform animal sacrifices.

In Bangladesh, 13 million animals are sacrificed each year; in Pakistan, more than nine million; and globally, it is estimated that approximately 50 million animals are sacrificed each year for this Islamic holiday.

Each year, this holiday causes the death of 50 million animals and encourages the practice of stoning anything that is contradictory to the Quran, Hadith, and Islamic theology. And this is the holiday that Haney and his Democratic colleagues in the California State Legislature want to make into an official state holiday.

War, stoning, and animal sacrifice—these are the values that have been unanimously approved by the committee, and are on track to becoming approved by the California government.

Yom Kippur is a Jewish holiday about the value of being self-reflective and atoning for our personal sins. Epiphany is a Christian holiday celebrating the baptism of Jesus; Good Friday deepens the Christian faith as it honors the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for all of humanity; and Ash Wednesday reminds Christians of the journey of Jesus during Lent that leads to the Resurrection on Easter. Atonement, spiritual awareness, faith in God: these are values that the State of California rejects as holidays while honoring the Islamic values of war and death.

With the passing of this bill, which is not certain but is highly likely, California will officially have gone off the cliff, rejecting Western civilization in favor of officially adopting Islamic practices and values.

Rest in peace, California. We will miss you.

California-based startup Span has developed XFRA, a distributed AI-compute network that turns unused electrical capacity in residential homes and small businesses into miniature data centers.  

It may be one of the more ingenious workarounds yet from tech bros, as traditional data-center buildouts are increasingly delayed or canceled, not only because of permitting bottlenecks and grid constraints, but also because of rising local opposition.

Across parts of the country, ordinary folks are watching power bills surge, while AI hyperscalers are set to splurge $700 billion on data center buildouts this year alone. XFRA appears to be a convenient sidestep of local opposition by tech bros, transforming homes into miniature data center nodes. 

“Comprising a distributed network of compute nodes located in residential and small commercial spaces, XFRA enables both the immediate and future compute needs of hyperscalers, neoscalers and AI cloud providers,” Span revealed earlier this month.

SPAN says XFRA is already running revenue-generating test units and plans a 100-unit test later this year, with broad U.S. deployment planned for 2027. This deployment next year could scale to more than 1 gigawatt of AI inference compute capacity.

According to a LinkedIn video, Span CEO Arch Rao says each node contains Dell PowerEdge servers with 16 Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs, 4 AMD EPYC CPUs, and 3 TB of RAM, connected to a 24-port gigabit switch.

In the XFRA White Paper, Rao outlined how XFRA would install an “energy and compute system, including SPAN panel, whole-home battery backup system, along with the XFRA compute Node, at no cost to homeowners.”

The white paper then describes how homeowners benefit from a backyard data center: “XFRA pays the homeowner a monthly rental to subsidize their energy and high-speed broadband bills such that they are a fraction of what they would normally be. This offers homeowners a sizable discount, and predictability in their monthly billing.”

“your mortgage basically pays for itself” 1,2

1) mortgage may be 20%-40% higher
2) homeowner’s job will migrate to collocated data center https://t.co/vBJv3cZAVm

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 5, 2026

News of the backyard data center concept first circulated earlier this month. The topic resurfaced on Tuesday when CNBC reported that Nvidia and homebuilder PulteGroup are helping SPAN install mini data centers in homes.

X users had a lot to say about the backyard data-center concept: 

putting compute on residential meters is how they bypass every local zoning fight

— StockStorm (@StockStormX) May 5, 2026

2027 home invasion:

“Leave the jewelry. Where are the Blackwells?”

— Maximilian Ruess (@MaximilianRu29) May 5, 2026

people are stealing copper wire and they want us to put ~$300k worth of electronics on the outside of our homes?

— DAM (@damcurious) May 5, 2026

Running at 8 hours a day off peak would only cost about 17k just in electrical- no mention on how to cool it, or what external connectivity options are. Californias load can’t even sustain the EV’s currently on grid and people think we should be putting half rack AI clusters in…

— Business Tactical (@Bacon_Is_King) May 5, 2026

Only a matter of time before politicians try to ban backyard data centers… 

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal jury in Texas found a physician guilty of unlawfully distributing over a million pills of opioids and other controlled substances from a Houston-area clinic that operated as a pill mill, the Justice Department announced Monday.

Dr. Barbara Marino, 65, of Tomball, was the sole prescribing physician at Angels Clinica, where she prescribed oxycodone, hydrocodone, and the muscle relaxer carisoprodol despite no legitimate medical purpose. The clinic accepted only cash and charged based on the prescriptions.

“Medical physicians who exploit their prescribing authority for profit over patient care break an inherent trust with their patients and we will hold them accountable,” Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division said in a statement. “The Department of Justice remains committed to protecting the public from dangerous and unlawful distribution of controlled substances, especially when the drug dealer is a doctor.”

DEA Assistant Administrator Cheri Oz said patients put their trust and lives into the hands of medical and health care professionals.

“The highly addictive, dangerous misused drugs in this case—oxycodone and hydrocodone—are meant to treat pain, not cause it,” Oz said. “DEA remains relentless in our pursuit of those who poison our communities and exploit our health care system, all to line their own pockets with the profit from other’s pain.”

Prosecutors noted that many patients were delivered by street-level “crew leaders” or “runners” who then filled the prescriptions and peddled the pills. Marino received over $400,000 in less than a year for writing the scripts, while ignoring red flags outlined in Texas pharmacy board guidance, prescribing the strongest short-acting versions of the drugs to nearly every patient.

In the trial, jurors heard of a pregnant woman in her third trimester who received the opioid-muscle relaxer combination, and a patient diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The jury found Marino guilty of one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and four counts of distributing a controlled substance. She could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison per count.

At Marino’s trial, an OB/GYN testified to the dangers to the pregnant patient and her unborn child. The prosecutor argued in closing arguments that the woman “didn’t go to her doctor, she went to her drug dealer.”

The DEA investigated the case, and the Justice Department’s Criminal Division Fraud Section trial attorneys prosecuted the case, along with the Texas Attorney General’s Office Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Sentencing for Marino has not yet been scheduled.

The U.S. Air Force reports that the Boeing 747 donated by Qatar, now designated the VC-25B Bridge, has completed modification and flight testing and is entering the paint phase ahead of deployment as an interim Air Force One jet. 

The bridge aircraft is a former Qatar head-of-state Boeing 747-8i that will serve as an interim presidential aircraft until Boeing’s delayed VC-25B replacements are ready, now expected in 2028. 

“This program epitomizes what is possible when clear accountability is placed on one individual, and the entire enterprise of stakeholders aligns behind a single mission outcome … deliver a bridge capability as soon as possible to relieve pressure on the aging VC-25A fleet,” Gen. Dale White, Department of War direct reporting portfolio manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems, wrote in a press release.

The VC-25B Bridge underwent flight testing in Texas and is now in a hangar being painted in a “new red, white and blue” livery, according to the U.S. Air Force. The service said the aircraft will be ready for use by summer, likely ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations on July 4.

Rendering of the new paint scheme:

Military blog TWZ noted there are still a lot of “questions swirling about the legality and ethics of receiving the gifted plane.” Last May, the Pentagon took delivery of the aircraft and said it would rapidly undertake the required modifications.

USAF did not disclose the new capabilities added to the former Qatari jet nor disclose the cost of the modifications. Lawmakers suggested last year that those modifications could exceed $1 billion.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The Trump administration is cracking down hard on radical gender policies in public schools. The Department of Justice has launched full investigations into 36 Illinois school districts accused of helping children “change genders” without telling their parents and pushing sexual orientation and gender ideology without proper opt-out notifications.

While blue-state bureaucrats treat families as obstacles, the DOJ is stepping in to enforce basic accountability and Supreme Court precedent. 

The review is also looking at whether the district’s violated parents right to opt their child out of lessons on gender and s*xuality.”

🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration launches investigations into DOZENS of Illinois school districts for carrying out TRANSGENDER transitions on kids behind the parents’ backs

WTF?! This is DEMENTED. Pull all funding!

“Prosecutors say they helped children CHANGE GENDERS… pic.twitter.com/teYRZvH1NT

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 4, 2026

Senior correspondent Mike Tobin reported: “The DOJ has launched an investigation into some 36 schools in Illinois. The investigation is going to probe whether the schools are pushing woke agenda on the students, particularly if they’re pushing s*xual orientation and gender ideology.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon made the administration’s position crystal clear: “This Department of Justice is determined to put an end to local school authorities keeping parents in the dark about how sexuality and gender ideology are being pushed in classrooms.”

“Supreme Court precedent leaves no doubt: parents have the fundamental right and primary authority to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children,” Dhillon added.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker dismissed the probe as “a sham aimed at punishing states President Trump does not like.”

The official DOJ announcement confirms the scope: the investigations examine whether districts included sexual orientation and gender ideology (SOGI) content in any pre-K-12 class and whether parents received opt-out notices. They will also assess compliance with biological-sex rules for bathrooms, locker rooms, and girls’ sports. 

This isn’t isolated. It directly builds on a pattern of leftist gender ideology assault that the Trump administration is systematically dismantling.

A year ago, the White House stated outright that “changing a minor’s gender is child abuse and medical malpractice.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to classify “misgendering and deadnaming” as child abuse:

Earlier this year, California parents were informed that they risk losing custody of their kids for simply refusing to affirm a child’s trans identity: https://modernity.news/2026/02/28/california-parents-risk-losing-custod…

These examples show the coordinated push: hide the truth from parents, punish dissent, and medicalize confusion at the expense of children’s long-term health. 

Illinois districts now face the same scrutiny California tried to ram through before the Supreme Court stepped in to protect families.

The investigations come after recent Supreme Court victories affirming parental rights over secret social transitions and ideological curriculum. Parents are no longer sidelined while schools play doctor and activist behind closed doors.

This DOJ action sends a loud message: federal funding and civil rights enforcement will no longer subsidize secrecy and experimentation on minors. 

The Trump administration will seek to defund the districts that refuse to comply and restore parents as the ultimate authority over their children’s upbringing. 

Without such action, The US risks going down the same path as the UK, where new trans guidance for schools suggests that kids as young as four can “change gender”: 

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